If the war isn’t working, keep doing the same thing but call it new

Afghan government launches new drug war strategy

Kabul – The Afghan government and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have launched a new strategy to fight the illegal drugs in war-torn Afghanistan, according to press statement issued by Afghan Counter-Narcotic Ministry on Wednesday.

A new strategy? Interesting. And it even has a name: National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS). OK. Good. So what’s the bold new approach they’ll be taking?

The statement said the main policy goal of the National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS) is to decrease the cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs with a view to complete and sustainable elimination.

Elimination of cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption? That’s not a strategy, that’s a delusion. Maybe there’s more to it.

It said four priority areas would be law enforcement, alternative livelihoods and economic development, battling drug addicting and boosting national and provincial government institutions.

Haven’t these always been part of the attempted approach?

The strategy also introduces four new methods to measure progress in the campaign and assess the impact of the policies and programmes.

Ah, this at least is different. They’ve got new methods to measure their lack of progress.
Just reading the information that has been put out, you almost feel sorry for the governments involved. They’re so pathetic. They know what they’re doing doesn’t work, and they can’t accept what we’d suggest, so they just wrap up the old failed policies with a new ribbon and trot them out again.